Intel puts details of 10nm-made Core i3-8121U laptop processor online

Intel has added the Core i3-8121U processor to its Ark website. It is the manufacturer’s first processor made on the new 10nm process. It will appear in laptops in the second quarter of this year.

Now that the Core i3-8121U is on Intel’s Ark website, all specifications are known. The dual-core processor runs at 2.2GHz with a turbo of up to 3.2GHz. The i3 has HyperThreading and can therefore work on four threads at the same time.

The Core i3-8121U is Intel’s first 10nm processor and it is striking that it is a variant without igpu. Intel has previously indicated that it will not be able to make 10nm processors on a large scale until next year. Presumably, the current Core i3 with a disabled GPU is easy to make on the early version of the process.

In terms of speed and consumption, the Core i3-8121U is not an improvement on paper over the Core i3-8130U, which is made at 14nm. That is a variant with a GPU and a higher turbo speed of 3.4GHz.

The Core i3-8121U has already appeared in an Intel NUC and in a Lenovo laptop. In both cases, an AMD Radeon RX 540 video card is used. A separate gpu is needed because of the lack of igp.

Intel now has three different fuel-efficient processors in the Core i3-8000 series, all of which come from different series of code names. However, Intel ranks them all under the eighth generation of processors.